HALF OF ALL AUSSIES NOW ON MESSENGER
Facebook has recently unveiled a bunch of data about Australia and it looks like we’re really keen on Messenger.
Stats show more than 13 million Aussies are now on Messenger – that’s more than half the country.
Significantly, 80% of Australian smartphone users are also hooked into the app.
This means we also get a lot of Messenger bots. Some of the most popular Messenger bots include Domain, the AFL, and ABC News.
The figures have not gone unnoticed at Facebook HQ. The high adoption rate means that Australia will be amongst the first international markets to try out Discover, which promotes bots from brands and publishers.
Message bots are likely to find their way into club and pub social media marketing and digital marketing in time. A simple task for a club message bot is to answer a message about what time the bistro opens and what are today’s specials. An advanced level of message bot usage could be to facilitate purchases like show tickets or room reservations. It can also be used for surveys. While these tasks can be completed on a website now, a message bot would allow a gaming property to take advantage of the growing Facebook Messenger market in Australia.
Globally, Messenger has a healthy 1.3 billion users. Is your club one of them?
What are Facebook messenger bots?
A messenger bot is a piece of software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automate tasks and converse with you. The more you chat with a bot, the more it will learn and the more useful it responses should get.
A bot is like an app, but the interface is a conversation rather than a menu. At least, that was the original intention when bots came onto the scene in 2016. Many bots today also use menus with preset phrases, such as “Tell me what’s new.”
Businesses in the travel, finance, media and entertainment, health, and retail sectors, in particular, have all found success with these pocket-sized personal assistants.
For example, you can open up Facebook Messenger at breakfast and ask your weather bot what Mother Nature has in store for you that day. Then you can ask your favourite newspaper bot for the latest sports or business headlines. Planning a trip? Message a travel bot for flights and hotel recommendations, to rent a car, and more. A message bot of “opt-in” gamers could provide details on jackpot levels or promotions.
Bots use AI technology to understand your question, find the right response, and deliver it in as conversational and “human” a way as possible.
SURVEYMONKEY NOW ON MESSENGER
Feedback facilitator SurveyMonkey has found a new way to interface with Facebook, running surveys directly within Messenger.
The Messenger-integrated surveys look pretty much the same as a standard Messenger conversation. Instead of chatting with a real friend, the respondent chats with a friendly SurveyMonkey.
Questions show up in the chat window, just like a message from a friend. Response options appear like smart-reply shortcuts, selectable and able to be swiped.
When a response is selected, the conversation moves on. The next question comes through and the next set of options are presented.
Functionally, both the set-up and execution of SurveyMonkey on Messenger look smooth. They ran it in open beta for a short while and ironed out a couple of issues
SurveyMonkey’s own research shows that, of the people who had taken a survey on Messenger, nine out of ten of them enjoyed their experience and would do it again. For a feedback channel, that’s pretty good.
This is one of the better and most sensibly implemented chat-bots we’ve seen recently. It gives you the capacity for one-on-one interactions with customers, delivered at scale and generating useful insights.
Sources: SMK.com, Hootsuite.comt, wideawakenv.com
